The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1887-08-18
BOOK-MAKING.
As Practiced by the Ancients Before the
Age of Printing.

L
century before Christ, paper being at
tributed to the first century after
Christ. 1t is certain that many hun
dred years ago they had begun to put
writing on transfer paper, lay this
face downward on wood or stone, rub
Oh the impression or paste on the
transparent paper, cut away the wood
or stone, and take an impression
in ink which duplicated the original.
First. probably, they cut the letters
iato the block, leaving white letters on
black ground, which method, Didot
thinks, was known to the Romans and
was the process referred to by Pliny;
afterward they cut away the block,
leaving the letters raised, to print
black on white. This last process is
attributed to Foong-Taou, Chinese
minister of state in the tenth century,
who was driven to the invention by
the necessity of getting exact copies
OF his official documents. Indeed,
there is detailed tradition of Chi
nese Gutenberg, one Pitching, who in
1041 carved cubes of porcelain paste
with Chinese characters, afterward
baking them, and literally setting"
the porcelain types by help of parallel
wires on plate of iron in bed of
heated resinous cement. These types
he hammered or planed even, and
pressed close together, so that when
the cement hardened they were prac-
tically solid block, which could be
taken to pieces again by melting the
cement. But Pitching was born out
of time, in the wrong country, and to
the wrong language. The Chinese
word-alphabetc contains at least 80, 900,
possibly 100000 characters (the Ma
tional Printing at Paris made
types for 43,000), and for the lesser
number the Chinese compositor would
require large room to himself, where
he could wander among five hundred
cases Cooking for sign" while Chi
nese wood-engravers will cut on pearl
wood, or on the hard waxen compost
ton used for that oldest of existing
dailies, the Pekin Gazette, ali octave
page of characters for forty or fifty
cents-a hundredth part of the cost of
coarse work. thousandth of the cost
of the finest work, here. The Chinese
printer, without press, but with a
double brush like canoe paddle,
mixing the block with one end and
pressing the paper laid on the block
with the dry brush at the other end,
prints two thousand sheets day, on
one side only, which are then bound
into book by making the fold at the
front of the sheet, and stitching
through the cut edges at the back.
A fair-sized book is sold for eight or
ten cents, and there is little induce
ment for improvement. Playing
cards, invented probably in Hindo-
stan, as a modification of chess, and
then engraved on ivory, We're made in
China and Hindostan centuries ago,
ar,,s thence they seem to have made
their way into Europe, probably
through Saracens or Jews before
1400.
Meanwhile the business of book
making by copying has had curious
development in two directions. The
industry so fiourishing in Cicero's
Rome had dwindled to nothing by the
sixth century. The great libraries
had been destroyed. Few could write
their names: fewer could read. The
Irish monks alone preserved the art of
illuminating, and from the island of
Iona shed such light as they could
throughout Europe. Charlemagne
himself could not write, but used a Gu
rious monogram to picture his name;
he was the more ready, it may be, to
permit his English adviser, the monk
Alcuin, to require that every monas-
terry should maintain Il scriptorium,
and every convent or bishop should
employ a permanent copyist, ''using
only Roman letters" for the making
of books. The Church monopolized
this art up to the twelfth century, when
the ignorance of the inferior clergy
and later the influence of St. Francis
dAssisi, who forbade Bible, breviary,
and psalter to his order, made way
for the lay booksellers who congre-
gated about the great schools of the
ology like Padua and Paris. But the
Church still arrogatcd superintend
ence and censorship; the University of
Paris required ''the stationers, vul-
carly called bookseller" first
name coming from their selling at
station or shop-''to tell the truth,
without deceit or lying, touching the
price of books" which was fixed by
four master booksellers appointed by
the University, with four deniers
profit when sold to teachers or schol-
ars, or six deniers when sold to the
public. Even then the bookseller
might not buy book for sale until it
had been exposed five days in the
hall of the university, and its purchase
declined by teachers and scholars; and
he was obliged to loan it for copying,
at small fixed price, to any student
giving security. Consequently the
university was. later on, compelled to
illuminate against base booksellers
who, naturally desiring to earn liv-
ing, did not uphold the dignity of
their profession, but mixed it up with
''vile trades" such as ''fripperies and
like haberdasherv," as modern book
sellers have also been compelled TO
do. Vellum became scarce, and the
rich buyers disdained paper. This
fact promoted the differentiation of
book-making into two distinct di-
visions: on the one side the superb
missals of the religious orders and
the daintily written and bound trou-
badour books of the courts; on the
other, a flood of alphabets, primers,
creeds, prayer-books, and crude
school-books, wonderfully cheap, from
a groschen up, made by unprofes-
sional copyists, demanded as the re-
suit of the Church schools, the work
of such early reformers as Wycliff and
Huss, and the general awakening of
Europe. The fraternity of St. Luke,
existing in Paris in 1891, the Company
of Stationers, in London, 1405, and
book-trade guilds in other cities. show
the extent of the industry.-R. R. Bo,O-
ker. in Harper's Magazine.